


thank god your heart is too close

by hoars



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Discrimination, Explicit Language, F/M, Homecoming, Implied Torture, M/M, Military, Reunion, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-17
Updated: 2013-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-25 20:11:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/642527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hoars/pseuds/hoars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a boy, ("Fuck you, dude. I'm seventeen. Not fifteen." Stiles laughs in his memory) waiting for him back home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	thank god your heart is too close

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Kissing Families by Silversun Pickups.
> 
> First, LAT --> Lupine Assault Team. A special forces team apart of the US Army composed of registered werewolves.  
> Witcher --> male witch that sounds way cooler than male witch.  
> The Preserve --> Government run facility dedicated to the research of supernatural beings  
> Domain --> Magic hotspot
> 
> Werewolves and other supernaturally inclined beings have to be registered with the government and wear something marking their status as which being they are. Werewolves are required to serve in the military for at least five years with three reserve in order to be called safe to society. 
> 
> Most of my military knowledge came from Loser fanfiction and conversations with my enlisted friends, so I'm sure some of it will be faulty but go with it. It's more entertaining that way.

There's a boy, ("Fuck you, dude. I'm seventeen. Not fifteen." Stiles laughs in his memory) waiting for him back home.

This is the same boy that writes Derek countless letters -- that's a lie, he has seventy-two -- about everything and nothing that matters in every penned letter. They learnt the hard way pencil smudges too often. 

This is the boy who shows up at his graduation, 1,143 miles away as a surprise and is so proud of Derek. Beaming with it. Lifting Derek’s heart from the pit of his stomach until he can breathe again. And gets Derek through L school.

The same one who became silent and blinked back salty tears when Derek explained why he’s leaving. Derek can still remember the anger in his brown eyes, his fists, the magic sticky air when all Derek can say is, “I’m sorry. It’s mandatory. I’m  _sorry_.”

There's a boy, ("Fuck you dude, I'm eighteen and you’re only  _twenty_." Stiles hits and settles across Derek’s chest) waiting for Derek to come home.

It's been a year already, only four more to go, and still his boy waits.

(Jackson's girl didn't wait. She sent a letter like many boys and girls in her position do, "Dear...I'm sorry.")

Derek returns to Beacon Hills as frequently as he's allowed and sees his boy for a few days, weeks really, but when days feel like hours, weeks feel like days, and isn't afraid.

There's this boy that carries Derek's heart around in his pocket in Beacon Hills, California. He has short brown hair and brown eyes and should by all accounts be ordinary. He isn't. He smiles mischievously over popcorn buckets, laughs during sex and never runs from Derek but to him.

Derek is kind of awed. Still. It's been two years together and this boy is still his.

(He has his dark days where he wants to tell Stiles to give up on him. Find someone else closer. Someone who might not die in the next year. Someone he gets to see for longer than a month every year. Derek actually says it. Maybe he is a little afraid. Afraid that for once in his damn life, Stiles might listen. Except. Stiles never does when he doesn't feel like it. His boy is stubborn.)

Captain Laura Hale is the commander of LAT 2, the Lupine Assault Team Derek’s assigned to. Derek likes her. She reminds him of his mother and in the middle of a fight, he has no trouble listening to her, reacting to the alpha in her. They share a name and one night they  pour over their family trees and find the woman they are both descended from, giving each other pleased smiles.

Still.

When Stiles comes to visit over his university spring break and Derek introduces the two, he stands by Stiles. He's hovering slightly behind him, just enough so Captain Hale knows if it came down to it, he's loyal first to Stiles and will rip her throat out.

Jackson gets depressed about his girl Lydia and kills four men before anyone realizes she didn't break his heart. She shredded it and stuffed the confetti in brownies that she gave to everyone she met. He turned into snake shifter-- a kanima. The twisting on shape shifters only happens when a trauma rocks the shifter's foundations. It takes the entire team and a dozen MPs to subdue Jackson.

It makes Derek a little stupid, because he uses Stiles as his anchor too. Uses the boy as an anchor, a reason to come home, makes him into a saint. It doesn't stop Derek from inhaling the worn tee shirt Stiles sends with his bimonthly care packages or from carrying it around until the scent fades. If Stiles were to suddenly disappear, Derek would probably be joining Jackson at the Preserve.

He's met one of the doctors that works at the Preserve. Dr. Kate Argent. The lead in finding weaknesses in shifters, specializing in killing werewolves. She had long brown hair and a face Derek could never call beautiful because of the cruelty itched in every line, but doesn't know how else to describe. She meets and greets every new LAT member. Probably hoping one of them will end up under her torture methods.

There's a boy ("I'm nineteen and a Witcher, not a boy" Stiles says indignantly in his ear) waiting for Derek to come home.

It's two years down, three to go and three beginning years of them that Derek hopes never ends.

They fight and argue and don't always like each other, but even with the burn of a fight blazing in his chest, Derek would rather die than be without his boy. It always thrills him, a little, when Stiles snarls, "I love you" over the phone, meaning it but still so angry and doesn't ever hang up until Derek growls back, "I love you too." They are both too mindful, tomorrow could be the day he dies.

Derek is home longer, breathing in Stiles' scent, hearing his heartbeat until he feels delirious with it. Drunk off Stiles. It's a happy place to be. Stiles doesn't mind. He pets Derek's hair, scratches his back in their bed and on their sofa in the little apartment Derek pays to keep his stuff and Stiles uses for school. Stiles usually waits for Derek to sleep, or be mostly asleep, to touch the new scars and grip Derek's tags hard. Injuries that carved into Derek and made him leave chunks of himself behind in enemy territories. Injuries that scar aren't paper cuts.

Stiles always comes with him to the airports to say goodbye. Standing just behind the security check point, with the other lovers and mothers and fathers saying goodbye, and not letting go. Stiles doesn't cry, always smiles because he knows Derek loves his smile, keeps it tucked closer to his heart than his tags. Derek has his suspicions Stiles sits in his Jeep in the airport parking lot and cries. A sluice of tears and sorrow. But he doesn't call Stiles on it like Stiles doesn't call Derek on the bruises he leaves every time he hugs Stiles goodbye.

There's a boy ("I'm twenty, not exactly a teenager anymore." Stiles writes and Derek can hear the pout) waiting for Derek to come home.

Derek is now Sgt. Derek Hale of the LAT. He's on year four, thank god and Captain Laura Hale dies. Died in action is the official story. The unofficial story is her gear had been contaminated by W27. The kind of wolfsbane that drives werewolves feral. Derek killed her to protect their LAT squad.

Matt still died.

His tags glow yellow-white after that. Like cream. Protection against wolfsbane made by an accomplished Witcher. He thinks of Stiles and every minute the feral, primal,  _alpha_  part of his mind gnashes its teeth against his control, he thinks of how they heat against his chest and Stiles and finds his way back to his LAT. He thinks about Stiles is a little sneakier than he originally gave him credit for and smiles stupidly.

They award him, for surviving and helping others survive. For killing the alpha and woman he respected.

The Preserve makes noise about taking him to study the effects of an Alpha spirit on a Beta body, but Laura's -- their Pack has already bonded with Derek. The Brass can't give Derek to the Preserve. Not without decommissioning LAT 2. Registered werewolves are too hard to come by to risk it. The next generation of registered werewolves not mandated to enlist for another year.

Before Laura...before, the team consisted of Laura, Derek, Jackson, Matt and Isaac.

Only two original members are still operational and there's nothing to do about it, they need at least two more if they want to do more than barely escape by the skin of their teeth. Derek doesn't need to see Stiles sad, afraid eyes to know Stiles senses every time Derek nearly dies. He hates it a little that he can't protect Stiles from that pain, that he can't promise him he'll be okay.

A mated pair, Erica and Vernon Boyd are added to his team. They make him smile and make him clutch the tags that still glow in loneliness. He misses Stiles. An ever present ache. Erica is a detonating and deactivating explosions specialist. Boyd is a hand to hand specialist, technically. Derek knows how to read through the bullshit now. What Boyd really is, is hard to kill so his other teams have used him as a human shield. Cannon fodder before Boyd met Erica and suddenly everyone was wary of hidden bombs in their kits. Isaac is a pilot but everyone refers to him as a transportation specialist. Derek has yet to come across something Isaac can't get running and operate.

They all work well together, the mission in India, looking for the pack of hellhounds the shamans from Pakistan lost control of and have been eating innocent souls, going smoothly with Erica using her skills in the reverse, Boyd protecting Derek's back while Isaac gets the Humvee operational because the hellhounds are smart and went for it first. They get home safely, only the taste of copper lingering in Derek's mouth, but otherwise he's fine.

The Preserve gives them three months of leave after they get back from Cairo and the sand devils, sand in every crevice imaginable. They have a new member to break in, but Derek doesn't care the Preserve is damning his team with a trauma bitten werewolf because he gets Stiles for three wonderful months.

There's a boy ("I'm twenty-one, you ass," Stiles says fondly. "I pay bills.  _Your_  bills. I'm not a kid.") waiting for Derek to come home.

Sgt. Scott McCall comes with a Preserve agent, Special Agent Allison Argent. McCall is a liability when the woman is around. He's terrified of becoming feral and Derek wants to take the kid into the wilds of whatever country they've been requested to and teach him how it  _is_  instead of what it can be. If the kid wasn't such a crack shot, Derek would request McCall transferred out, but he was a sniper and damn good one.

Agent Argent proves her worth in Africa, hunting a hyena Pack. Her specialty, before Scott imprinted on her of all things, had been interrogation. Derek respects anyone that can laugh with joy in their hearts, twirling a bloody knife in their hands. She's amazing at compartmentalizing and it's almost like there's two of her.

He's on year five, the last one and Stiles is still unexplainably in love with Derek. Derek spends his evenings writing letters, sometimes sending five at once because he never knows when post will be regular or secure. Not really.

Everything goes wrong in Brazil, hunting snakes – a distant memory, “The nabau, related to the titanoboa. Twenty feet long, how cool is that?” – that should only exist in the campy horror movies Stiles likes to play when he's studying and eating all at once. Derek's pretty sure he's seen this movie, actually.  _Anaconda_.

"Snakes, dude." Scott hisses and squeezes the trigger.

"It's times like these I wish Jackson was here!" Isaac shouts.

They're too remote is the thing. Not even Allison can communicate with the Preserve, and she was able to contact them in the middle of a blizzard in Nepal, and Base warned them before they went in that the Amazon disrupted most telecommunications. Mahealani joked, maybe, that if it was urgent enough they should burn the forest down and they'd get a pick up.

They don't need an emergency pick up. They bag one of the snakes for The Preserve and wipe out the rest of the nest. They arrive at the rendezvous point exactly on time, but no one shows. They camp there for a week before they grimly come to the conclusion something is wrong. Scott kills the bagged nabau and they get moving.

They don't stop moving, going towards home with intentions of going to the nearest US base and demanding information. Allison is human and more fragile and Derek has to shift, the tags warm and comforting and telling him it's okay, so she can ride on his back as they fight their way through the Amazon

The base doesn't help. Dead bodies. Communications down. SOS warnings and Homeland Security's warnings frozen on screens. Home has been attacked. The entire modernize world has been attacked and Derek holds his tags so tightly, his name and information bruising into his hand because magic dies with the user. Stiles is okay. He's alive and that's all that matters.

There's a boy (nothing, only silence, but he's twenty-two and alive that's all that matters) waiting for Derek to come home.

Derek is doing his best. They've pieced together, as they've travelled north, what happened. It was magic. Who was responsible is still unclear, everyone blaming someone else. The shamans, curanderos, chovihanos, witchers, witches, sorcerers, mages, priests, priestesses, voodoo and hoodoo practitioners, witchdoctors,  _eco-terrorists_. Whoever it was, unleashed magic primal and intent on reclaiming the earth. Technology was useless. Mother Earth had reclaimed her kingdom.

"Where do we go?" Erica asks.

"Where ever we want." Scott says. "It's not like there's anyone out there who cares. Governments have been overthrown. I doubt the Army will be after us for AWOLing."

"I'm going to California." Derek says when he feels comfortable back on home ground, over the Baja California-California border.

"The Preserve is based there." Allison says thoughtfully.

Isaac slowly grins. Erica tosses another log on the fire and smirks. "California, huh?" They don't split up. Scott always going where Allison leads. Boyd crafts a bow for her and in a world where bullets and guns are coveted, she never lacks ammunition. "I was on the Olympic archery team when I was younger." She says proudly when she shoots a rabbit a hundred yards away.

They find the Preserve first and it's terrible. But it also explains the monsters that have been terrorizing the west coast, why everyone flees east and south. The Preserve is destroyed. Like something broke in or broke out and set everything free. Derek remembers the specimens the Preserve had him delivery the past five years and is sorry.

Dr. Kate Argent is rotting in her lab, Allison's face closed and shut in Op. mode. Derek is viciously glad but he knows to keep it hidden. She was a nightmare to his family, to the supernatural. Her father had written the bill that forced Derek all over the world, ridding it of troublesome supernaturals. Convinced Derek was a part of a subspecies and everyone like him was better off dead or enslaved to protect humans. Derek hated her and everyone like her.

They search the labs and Isaac finds where they kept Jackson. There's green-yellow scales on the ground that smell like snake but also like Pack. Derek wishes he'd been able to do more to keep Jackson with them, but it had been Laura's call then and she had been pressured.

"I knew his handlers." Allison says when she finds Derek and Isaac, Scott trailing her, looking angry and sick and so afraid. Derek wonders what this place did to him in the name of retaining his humanity before he came to LAT 2. "Dr. Lydia Martin and Dr. Gerald Argent. My grandfather's dead in the panic room." Her voice is flat. "I think Lydia let Whittemore out and left."

"Why do you think that?" Isaac asks.

"I looked at the logs before all the systems went down, she opened his cell." Allison smirks, darkly. "And Lydia always did see ten steps ahead of everyone else."

Erica and Boyd manage to scavenge supplies from the ruins and they're ready to continue up the state. Derek left Stiles in their hometown. Beacon Hills was a magnet for trouble, a Domain. It was also the home of the Hale Pack and their library on magic that Stiles never spent time in because he preferred Derek’s room.

Beacon Hills, when they find it nestled between the woods and low mountains, is protected by a shimmering barrier of gold. Derek passes it, feels it touching him and it's familiar and his tags glow so brightly that even under his shirts they aren't hidden. Scott and Isaac try next and shrill whistling begins to sound and the barrier turns red.

"What the hell?" Scott yelps, covering his ears. Isaac is on the ground, curled tightly, clutching at his ears.

 Erica and Boyd whine and try assisting their Pack mates, but it becomes apparent to Derek they can't hear the whistling. Derek turns towards town, where he can hear people grouping and coming towards Derek and the warrior Allison is braves herself and steps through the red barrier, it doing nothing to her to stand next to Derek with her bow nocked and ready.

The barrier, a magic defense Derek understands quickly, against supernaturals. Humans free to pass. It doesn't explain Derek but he has an idea about who casted it. He approves. Only an hour away had been a tribe of  _ebu gogo._

He recognizes The Sheriff first. A rifle in his hands and grim face that relaxes into a smile when he sees Derek. "About damn time." The man says.

There's a boy ( twenty-three and in this apartment) waiting for Derek to come home.

Derek met Stiles when he was sixteen and Stiles was fourteen and new to high school. He'd been sitting in the hall, waiting for the end of lunch in an over worn fading red hoodie with the band around his arm proclaiming his Witcher status to all. Mandated by federal law. Children were cruel and didn't need a reason beyond their parents bigotry to act like little assholes. The Witcher symbol was one gold dragon flying upwards, a silver dragon flying downward but their tails entwined together.

There weren't many people like them at Beacon Hills High School, much less The Sheriff’s son – a man who made national headlines when he married a witch the Preserve sent him after instead of turning her in and subsequently retiring – and the son of alpha werewolves of a pack of thirty strong and growing. Derek's wears a band around his arm too. A Celtic full moon that sets him apart as a werewolf.

Derek can't remember what made him sit down next Stiles that day, but he did.

His boy has waited six years. He's waited wonderfully and Derek has spent every last of the past six years trying to get back to him. Stiles painted their apartment door red, and Derek has a moment of insanity where he thinks, ' _we aren't getting our deposit back_.' He scared to open on his own door. Afraid of what he'll find, of what Stiles might find in Derek.

He opens their door, and steps into the apartment and closes the door. He has to lean against it, weak with the flood of stilesstilesstiles. His head thumps and Derek has to close his eyes when he hears the voice that he's been painstakingly keeping alive in his memory since the nabau. "Deaton if that's you we have to have some serious words about you pulling down  _my_  barrier." Stiles says, sounding alive and pissed. "The whole point of it is to protect the town and it can't do that--" Stiles' voice becomes louder as he stops whatever he was doing in the bedroom to come greet his guest. "If it's not up." He finishes weakly.

Derek quickly opens his eyes, eager for his first look at Stiles in a year. He's grown his hair out a little and lost a little weight. Probably the effort of maintaining the barrier. Magic always did wear him out. His skin was tan and healthy, no obvious scars on his face or arms but there was a lot of skin covered by his shirt and jeans, the Witcher symbol around his wrist as an armband. "Derek?" Stiles whispers and Derek feels the whine, struggling up his throat at the sound.

He should have had Erica cut his hair when she offered outside of San Diego. He should have asked the Sheriff for a place to shower and shave, maybe a pair of clean clothes. He shouldn't have shown up with messy hair, part of a beard or his bloodstained and worn civvies, only marginally better than his fatigues. He makes a choking sound again and Stiles pitches himself at Derek.

"Oh my god, oh my god," Stiles chants. "I knew you were alive. I'd  _know_  if you weren't."

Derek closes his arms around his boy that waited six years for him to come home and breathes deep.

"I'm never leaving again."

**Author's Note:**

> Can you believe this started out of my desire for a military coming home fic? It ran away from me, a little.


End file.
